No one becomes a great artist overnight. It takes dedication and motivation.

Some people come equip from the start with natural talent, but even so, natural talent is not enough for anyone to become great at anything. In order to be great at something, you must gain and hone skills. Earning new skills will bring you a step closer to greatness! In no time, you’re sure to be a 100 trick artist!

Well then how do you become a great artist?

Practice

Say you’re a great sketch artist. You use pencil and paper and sketch out everything you see: trees in the park, stairs, benches, passersby, birds, flowers, etc. That’s a good start! Observations! Through observing our surroundings we can study how things move or how light and shadows play a role in a still object. Now take it a step further: draw the same thing throughout the course of a day. Notice the lighting changes, and perhaps any other changes that alter the object (i.e. rain making something wet, or a bug taking a rest on the object while you draw, or even if the object shatters or is damaged in some way, like a pot or vase). You may also notice that after having drawn the same thing over time, that you have gotten better at your art and maybe more detailed as the day progressed. No? Then try again, and pick something more interesting to draw next time! After all, if you’re not challenging yourself, you will not grow as an artist.

Challenge Yourself

You may be excellent at drawing one thing, but maybe it’s time you tried something new. Testing your talent and skill by taking on new challenges makes you work your brain and discover creative solutions or new ways to draw something! For example, try drawing a portrait of someone. You may not be used to drawing faces or their features, and as everyone’s face is different, it can be quite a challenge the first couple times you try it out. You’ll learn there are certain measurements between someone’s eyes, nose and mouth that when they are not lined up, can make a person… not look quite right. But don’t worry about it! That is what challenges are for! It’s not supposed to be easy.

Patience

The road to become great can be long and tiresome, but if you believe in yourself and try every day, I’m sure you’ll notice a change. Date everything you draw. Draw several things every single day for a week. Make sure they are as detailed as possible and that you’ve really tried your hardest, even if you’re unhappy with the end result of them. At the end of the week, line up all your drawings in a row, and walk through them one by one. Is the third drawing better than the first? Is the seventh drawing better than the third? Take notice of your skills developing over time. I’m sure after a few months, you will be surprised at how far you’ve come. It is important to be patient with yourself and not to get discouraged at a bad drawing. Simply pick up a new sheet of paper and draw something new.

Helpful Tools

Don’t know what to draw? Sit down and write a list of the first 100 things that pop into your head. And if you can’t think of specific things, pick a theme such as flavors. After you write down 100 flavors, go forth and create art that revolves around one of those flavors and feel free to interpret them in any way you desire! If the flavor is orange for example, you could draw oranges, something else orange, draw something that isn’t normally orange and make it orange, not use color at all, use letters or symbols, draw something that reminds you of the flavor, or draw something so abstract maybe you’re not even sure why you drew it! There are no rules, just have fun with it! Making lists of things to draw can cure artists block any day of the week.

Once you’ve got the gist of one new technique or skill, try out another, and another and another! There are many styles, old and new to be found and learned. There are plenty of art books that teach old and new techniques using a wide variety of mediums and topics. They could be the tools you need to move yourself forward on the path to becoming a great artist!

Don’t have money for fancy books? I’m sure you can find some inspiration or tutorials online! And be sure to always challenge yourself. Over time, you’ll figure out what techniques you like and develop your own style, and all those tricks you learned along the way will be helpful tools on your road to becoming a great artist.